GTFK

After 20+ years on Microsoft operating systems, I’m finally considering moving over to the dark side (or *away* from the dark side, depending on who you ask, LOL!). Yes, I’m considering buying a Mac. Actually a MacBook.

I decided to get a Dell 1405 because of it’s purported great battery life and I placed my order Friday night (and I got a 25% coupon, sweet!). Then two things happened on the same day; Dell held my order waiting for me to call to verify it, and I got a MacMall catalog in the mail and decided to read it. Hmmm.

I blogged about the Mac when I first heard of Parallels, and a friend of mine has a MacBook Pro that he runs Windows on so I’ve been considering it for a while. Well, yesterday I went to the store to check it out and it was pretty nice (except for lack of a right mouse button, doh!) but the guy at CompUSA couldn’t tell me about battery life.

No problem, I have another friend with a MacBook and I emailed him to ask about battery life. To which he replied:

I just googled for “mac book pro extended battery” and it
returned plenty of results…

Ouch, Busted! He did go on to relay his experiences, but point taken. :)

Anyway, though I still haven’t decided which laptop to get, I christen thee a new meme in my friends honor while I pay homage to that soon-to-be bygone era where a few people actually did read the manual:

GTFK: Google The F***in’ Keywords

Just to be explicit, there is a proper context for using GTFK. When someone asks you a question that requires a long explanation that they could have easily answered themselves, it is perfectly appropriate to simple tell them:

4 comments ↓

Get the MacBook. Now that you’ve got Parallels and/or VMWare Fusion, you can get to Windows stuff if you need. After 20 years, though, shouldn’t you check out the other side? Seriously, if someone had only used a Mac for 20 years, I might even encourage them to get a Windows box–maybe. That isn’t the situation here, anyway, so get the MacBook.

Regarding GTFK, I’ve used <a href="http://www.coty.ws/2003/08/googleslapping.html">SFG</a> in the past, but GTFK does have the advantage of having four letters to match RTFM.

BTW, came here via <a href="http://blog.jeffhaynie.us/elegant-urls.html">Haynie’s post</a>. Seriously, ignore <a href="http://marcf.blogspot.com/2007/02/apple-part-2-bad.html">Fleury’s post</a>. As far as I could tell it boiled down to problems with keyboard shortcuts. Hella weak.

Coty: Thanks for the comments. It was a really hard decision but I’ve already went with the Dell. Why?

– Many people online quoted battery life on the 9 cell battery is over 5 hours
– No room to expand to mobile broadband on the Mac
– 7200prm hard disk on the Dell
– With equivalent specs and 3 years of service AppleCare equivalent and Lojack was $500 cheaper, even having to pay tax on the Dell and not on that Apple.
– The cost of additional accessories I already have for the PC (I’m on a shoestring right now.)

In the past I’ve always been upset by Mac’s price premium over the PC (and by most Apple user’s "religious" attitude.) The latter seems to be changing some as Mac now appeals to more people and I thought the former had changed, but evidently not.

That said, once my riches start rolling in from my new venture <smile>, I’ll look to pick up a MacBook and sell/retire the Dell. OTOH, I’ve got 21 days to return it and if don’t just love the Dell, back it goes.

Yeah, sorry ’bout the HTML. I’m more and more unhappy with dasBlog. Looking for something to move to that runs on Windows hosting account that I love (though I may give it up and move it all to Linux.)

Hey I found this blog entry by searching google for "mac bookpro extended battery" and I still don’t know anything about battery capacity. So, I guess I’ll continue to GTFK past the first page of results. :-)

BTW, I recently switched to a Mac BookPro using Parallels to run XP after two decades of being a windows user. I love that I have immediate access to unix shell prompt. Granted there are some quirks w/ the Mac and it’s MUCH more expensive than a comparable Dell or HP, but I absolutely love it. Within minutes it felt more "right" for me than any other computer I’ve ever used. Hope you give it a shot next time your in the market for a laptop.